Your collection : depth or breadth

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CRKrueger said:
I'm guessing they've had that conversation, lol.
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When we lived in the condo my wife told me she was tired of my comics and other stuff filling up the closet even though I kept it on my side. That was the only spot I had in the place to put it, so I was stuck. In certain situations we don’t have much of an option but when you’ve got multiple rooms full of shit, well, that’s different. Now that we have a house and I have multiple places to put shit, I have kept my collection the same size.
 
sharps54 said:
My board game collection is actually much more of a space hog than my RPGs, I’m working on culling it as well.
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Yes, I've also recently dumped a lot of stuff I'm never going to play enough to justify the space.

I used to go for breadth, but now I'm going to consciously focus on depth to break the awful gravitational pull of new-shiny syndrome.

I really only have time in life to focus on two RPGs and run them enough to be good at them. One of them must be D&D of course, and the other will be something modern/near-future once I finally figure out which system/theme will suit me best for the long haul.
 
sharps54 said:
My board game collection is actually much more of a space hog than my RPGs, I’m working on culling it as well.
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Ufda...let's not get into board game collections. My RPG collection takes up 2 bookshelves; my board game collection takes up 5 shelves. I can't feel bad about that one, though. Every board game we have gets played, aside from a couple of more complicated ones I haven't learned the rules on yet. My wife, son, and I play board games every night after his shower. Probably 80%+ of my RPG collection hasn't been played yet. :sad:
 
I'm sort of mixed. I have some games where I have a pretty extensive collection and others where I just have the core book.

For a while I got on a kick of purchasing whole game lines if I thought they were remotely interesting, fueled by missing many RQ publications in the 80s when I was a poor college student. When I got engaged, I couldn't justify the amount of space they all took, collections of books I had never even cracked open.

So now, an overview of what I have:

95% of the RQ1/2/3 line (a lucky eBay lot in 2005 filled in most of what I was missing from the 80s, and the RQ Classics kickstarter got me PDFs of most of the rest, and I bought POD of the handful I didn't have in print). Now I'm maybe missing one or two Chaosium RQ2 items, and Land of Ninja from RQ3. I also have a scattering of newer stuff.

I have an good sized, but no where near complete collection of pre-D&D 2.0 modules, plus physical copies of all core books except Rules Compendium (I've kicked myself for not picking that up) and Immortals. My collection also includes some 3rd party modules.

The FFE CD-ROMs give me a very complete Classic Traveller collection to supplement my print collection of all the core books (1977 for the core set) and a few supplements and adventures and some 3rd party stuff.

I kept most of my Talislanta (got rid of the D20 books) and a bunch of Tekumel stuff (most of the "official" stuff, Different Worlds reprint of EPT not the original, and some 3rd party stuff - no where near a complete collection0.

But I've also got Champions 2e (and a few supplements), GURPS 3rd (and a few supplements), Chivalry & Sorcery 1e (no supplements) as some examples of extensive lines where I just have a small portion of what's out there.

Where I have depth, it's mostly with games I think I might actually play (with Talislanta and Tekumel being exceptions). The breadth is to cover games I might be interested in playing, or at least being able to reference the rules.
 
I'm pretty happy with my collection, I can easily access most of it. There's a few things I regret not getting when they were available (original EPT, Nomad Gods, Land of Ninja for some examples), and some things I regret, at least a little bit, getting rid of (C&S supplements is one I can think of right now, maybe some D&D adventures, Space Quest).
 
Endless Flight said:
I don’t envy you guys with the big collections. When we moved into our house three years ago, packing up my stuff was a pain in the ass and I only have a couple bookcases. I actually want to trim it down even more.
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Pain in the back is more like it, I'd say:thumbsup:!
 
I mostly run my own settings and campaigns so I don't own many such supplements, and I think most rule supplements make the systems they expand worse, so I don't buy many of those either.

I own a lot of different rules systems though.
 
Or my copy of The Lawnmower Man RPG by Leading Edge Games, or the Ghost Dog RPG or …

Ok, these games will probably never get played but they are neat to own and page through.

Board games are maybe a little easier to sort. Will I ever again break out FFG’s orignal Arkham Horror with all the expansions? Probably not although I wonder if there’s even a market for it anymore.

edit to add I do want to dump the games that require apps pretty soon like Mansions of Madness 2E and the X-Com board game, I don’t want to be stuck with them after the app support goes away.
 
Endless Flight said:
When we lived in the condo my wife told me she was tired of my comics and other stuff filling up the closet even though I kept it on my side. That was the only spot I had in the place to put it, so I was stuck. In certain situations we don’t have much of an option but when you’ve got multiple rooms full of shit, well, that’s different. Now that we have a house and I have multiple places to put shit, I have kept my collection the same size.
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Tell us, when did you meet your new wife?
J/k
 
Don't really have much of a collection anymore. At one time I could fill 3 bookcases with my RPGs, now I can fill maybe two shelves, if I include Wargames. Sold it all off years ago - now I just have the MSH line, my Tribe 8 books, my Planescape books, and a few random keepsakes like Paranoia 2nd edition, Shadowrun 2nd edition, and the Tenchi Muyo RPG.
 
I just did some math with the games and game pdfs I could easily reach.

68% Core Rules
32% Supplements (I really do not collect adventures unless they are mostly setting exploration or defining an area).

Also, most of this is that many games never reach the supplement glut phase in development, thus are lucky if they get core out and maybe one or two support books out. Unless I really like the game or it really needs the supporting book (Oh look the book on androids/ replicants well might need that,) I tend to ignore other books. Of course, if I really like the game or it really needs the support, I will collect every possible book for it.
 
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I find it is mainly the newer games, I’m looking at all the spin-offs of The Black Havk and PbtA style games, that don’t have supplements. Older games almost always had at least a few. There are exceptions but pre internet it was rare for a game to be one book and done.
 
Mostly depth. I have bought a lot of RPGs over the years, but over time I only keep those that I like. And if I like an RPG, I tend to buy more than just the corebook for it.

So, for those that I have just the corebook of, these tend to be new RPGs that I am looking into and have yet to decide on or are RPGs that have just a corebook (like many PbtA RPGs).
 
I guess my stuff is more on the depth end of the scale? I've got a lot of DCC RPG stuff, a whole bunch of LotFP books, and a metric fuckton of BRP/D100 and a smattering of other stuff like Falkenstein, Dying Earth, and some system neutral stuff. Out of ~250 printed books/booklets, it looks like the core to supplements ratio is about 1:8; if I really like a system, apparently I gobble it all up.

Frankly, I probably should purge about half of this stuff, but almost everything on my shelf is something I like to have at hand and will read for fun or to pillage for ideas. I would be more ruthless in paring things down, but I have trouble reading PDFs straight through.
 
Hmm... interesting question....

Physical books I have the core books for maybe 6 or 8 very different systems. I have most of Classic Traveller. People keep giving me old copies of D&D DMGs (weird, every previous edition, multiples of a 2e & 3e, starting to think of using some for lighting the grill but worried they'd make stuff taste funny). Then I have supplements for a dozen or so games I'll never bother getting the rules for but I like the ideas or art. And a few old OD&D modules plus two small boxes of old semi-random Dragon Mags from the 80s & 90s (can probable recycle those). Other than AD&D, Traveller, and CoC I have zero matches between core books & supplements. But even then generally no more than 4 books of matched core + supplements.

PDF... if free/cheap I grab everything possible for a system I'm interested in. Although that's only 10 to 12 of them. So there's a directory for each game with like 50 to 150 files in it, maybe a quarter of which I've done anything more than skim the table of contents & indexes. Then I also have sets of PDFs supplements I have core books for, but only 3 systems and only out of print stuff with no reasonable (i.e. totally physically unavailable or nothing less that 120% original sale price) secondary market.

Fairly strict about if I'm not going to ever use something then don't get it. That kept the mini spending down too... until the 3d printer. But at least that's cheaper, easier doing custom jobs, & more than just making minis.
 
FWIW here’s a shelfie of my “active” game shelf. The RQ2 hardback book is hiding behind the bar. A couple more Avalon Hill games (Source of the Nile and Speed Circuit) are out of frame at the end of the shelf. The dice-shaped box is filled with dice (of course) & other table-ephemera (pencils, scratch pads, rulers, playing cards, poker chips, glass beads, blank index cards, etc). There are also six file-boxes of stuff not on display - one of Traveller stuff (supplemental books, adventures, boxed sets, etc), one of RQ stuff (ditto), two of D&D and D&D-adjacent (Judges Guild, Midkemia Press, OSR) stuff, one of miscellaneous stuff (other RPGs and boardgames), and two of my own stuff - 38 years of old character sheets and maps and adventure notes and also a bunch of old convention programs and other memorabilia.

My wife thinks this is a lot. She really has no idea!D799EA2A-C86A-49E5-8B37-F5D2F91E320A.jpeg
 
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I actually got rid of a lot of physical books over time. I just don't have a reason to have a couple thousand books that I'm not going to run. I tend to only have physical copies of things I'm likely to run or play in, or that have some kind of sentimental connection for me (I have all my old L5R stuff still, even for all the old editions I'll never play).

For casual reading of games I'm just mining for stuff I just use pdfs now. Way easier to have a ton of them.

...my board game collection on the other hand >_>. (actually my growing board game collection was actually the reason I finally decided to sell off a ton of my old RPG books. Got rid of literally a thousand books at once).
 
Is this the RPG Hoarder anonymous thread or something? Get some self-control and stop wasting your money.

 
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Definitely Depth. As I get older, I have less and less time to spend reading new systems, and even less to playtest them. At this stage of the game, I am more inclined to spend my time working up interesting campaigns/ adventures than robbing newer systems for ideas. I have been in this game (no pun intended) long enough to realize that it is better for me to concentrate on two or three systems, rather than look for the Perfect System (which, as I have discovered - at least for me - ) does not exist.
 
I'm more or a nostalgia collector when it come to RPGs, focusing on originals and only a few games. But not really that active in it. Sometimes it has little to do with the game and more to do with the art (like I'll buy anything T4 for the Chris Foss art).

Usually if I buy something RPG related it is to play or for inspiration or to support the author.

My real collecting is art, a little higher price point than RPGs, I'd like to say art retains value better but have you seen the price for a White Box D&D?
 
I'm not a collector... I just have a problem LOL


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Dyrnwyn said:
LOL. I'm talking about the various short supplements and games that come in the charity bundles and such. Stuff like "100 Inn Names" and so on. If it looks interesting, I'll keep it around.
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I get around that by never downloading that stuff. I have so much stuff in bundles I haven't downloaded...
 
Grelan said:
Ufda...let's not get into board game collections. My RPG collection takes up 2 bookshelves; my board game collection takes up 5 shelves. I can't feel bad about that one, though. Every board game we have gets played, aside from a couple of more complicated ones I haven't learned the rules on yet. My wife, son, and I play board games every night after his shower. Probably 80%+ of my RPG collection hasn't been played yet. :sad:
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Totally agree with you on that. I have a separate closet for my boardgames, and that's after I got rid of a lot of them.

Endless Flight said:
I don’t envy you guys with the big collections. When we moved into our house three years ago, packing up my stuff was a pain in the ass and I only have a couple bookcases. I actually want to trim it down even more.
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When we last moved, I got rid of a crap ton of stuff free (over 150 lbs of books of various types). It was right as got on the pub, so got rid of them on the geek.

It still took me over a week of back and forth using the hand truck and crap loads of magazine boxes for me to get everything over to the new house. Thankfully, we only moved one street over.
 
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I go for breadth any day of the week. I can increase the amount of depth myself for any game, and in many cases I find the official supplements more of a hindrance than an advantage. Hell, sometimes I'd like to rip out many of the pages from the corebook just to emphasize the vision for my game.
 
My RPG collection peaked at about 600 books and it is now at about 500 and I plan to get it down to 250ish. Mainly depth but I always bought odd stuff from our local games shop 2nd hand bins so breadth crept in without planning.

I think I want to keep no more than 3 RPG corebooks for each genre plus a small number of old friends. If I keep the core then I will keep the supplements.

PDFs probably outnumber paper books by a factor of 2 or 3 to 1.
 
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